I wish to support Senator Craughwell's amendment to the Order of Business.

Is the Senator formally seconding it?

Yes. I wish to address the issue of carers. It is time that we cared for the carers. Some 355,000 people, or one in ten adults, are unpaid carers in Ireland. Only 81,071, or one in five, of those carers receive carer's allowance. They save the State the massive sum of €10 billion each year. The Government spends almost two and a half times more on the nursing home fair deal scheme than it does on carers. The point I am trying to make is that it is time for us to care for the carers.

I commend Family Carers Ireland on the launch of its pre-budget submission, which contains very simple requests. The first is to reform the means test for carer's allowance. It has not been reformed since 2008. There has been no change in the disregards and the allowable deductions are too limited. This means that many people do not meet the means test for carer's allowance.

We need to give consideration to the fact that carer's allowance is taxable. We do not tax vulture funds or multinational companies and banks are getting away without paying tax for 20 years, but we tax carer's allowance. That must be examined and changed.

Another matter that need to be changed is the restriction of 15 hours a week in respect of carers who work, take up a course in education or engage in voluntary work. That must be extended to at least 18.5 hours per week. We must value our carers.

We need to end the postcode lottery in regard to home care and carer supports. In my county of Mayo, we do not have the home care or carer supports that exist in other areas of the country.

We also need to replace the mobility allowance and motorised transport grant which were withdrawn in 2013. There is no reason these measures should not be brought back in, particularly for people living in rural areas who must travel long distances to hospital and for medical supports since the centralisation of such supports. In addition, the GP visit card should be extended to include carers in receipt of a carer's support package.

I ask that the Minister be asked to come to the House for a meaningful debate on how we treat our 355,000 unpaid carers in this State.

We should have that debate. The Labour Party will propose a motion in the Dáil later this evening regarding additional supports for carers. I hope that the House will unite behind that proposal, which includes many of the propositions outlined in Senator Conway-Walsh's contribution.

The spin that we have seen over the last couple days in particular from Fine Gael on today's hospital workers strike has been remarkable. There has been a common thread and a common pattern running through the contributions of Fine Gael backbenchers over the last couple of days and a succession of Fine Gael cannon fodder has been marched through the doors of various television and radio studios over the last two or three days, claiming that the strike is SIPTU's fault and that, to use the word referenced by the Minister for Health yesterday, it is "extraordinary" that the dispute has not been referred to the Labour Court and that health workers across the country are having their pay restored. These kinds of phrases display a remarkable ignorance of what this particular health dispute is about. Fine Gael is deliberately muddying the waters in this regard. This is not about pay restoration. Rather, it is about the implementation of a solemn deal and a job evaluation review process that was carried out in the context of the existing public sector pay agreement and within the architecture of successive public sector pay agreements. This is essentially about ensuring that our healthcare assistants, porters, chefs and other critical support staff grades across our hospital service are given just reward for the work they do. Their roles were independently and objectively assessed by experts in this field. A deal was done with the Department of Health and the HSE and now the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, is withholding the moneys that are legitimately owed to those healthcare staff. It is pathetic that Fine Gael has chosen to pick a fight with the lowest paid workers in our health service in order to re-establish its damaged reputation in terms of its management of the public finances. It is telling. This morning, I spent some time on the picket line at Louth County Hospital in Dundalk and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, supporting the stance that low paid health workers have been forced to take in a bid to have their rights vindicated. This is a classic upstairs-downstairs type scenario.

There is another upstairs-downstairs type scenario of which I was made aware yesterday. I do not necessarily want to identify the individual, but I know that she is happy for me to do so. A colleague of mine, a newly elected councillor in Drogheda, Councillor Michelle Hall, who represents the Drogheda rural electorate, works as a special needs assistant in Aston Village Educate Together school in Drogheda. She has learned through the school, her union and the Department of Education and Skills that unlike teachers she is not entitled to ten unpaid leave days to attend to her public duties. This is unfair and discriminatory. Fine Gael believes that only doctors and nurses are important in the context of the health service and it likewise believes that only principals and teachers matter in the context of the education system. This is unfair and discriminatory and it needs to be corrected. The Minister needs to respond to this issue immediately.